President Barack Obama today introduced his plan for a progressive takeover of state and local policing.

“We have a great opportunity… to really transform how we think about community law enforcement relations,” he said Monday.

“We need to seize that opportunity… this is something that I’m going to stay very focused on in the months to come,” Obama said, as he touted a new interim report from his Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

All Sharpton said that a Federal law should exist that “lowers the threshold” when it comes to charging white crime victims who were forced to kill a black attacker in self-defense. He said that Trayvon Martin, who used a racial slur and then violently attacked Zimmerman, should have been protected by Federal law. Sharpton says that Zimmerman should have been presumed to be motivated by racial hatred, even though the perpetrator’s girlfriend testified in court that Trayvon used a racial slur and initiated the physical confrontation.

Sharpton wants white crime victims, who shoot a black attacker in self-defense, to be presumed to have been motivated by racial hatred under Federal law. They the white victim can be prosecuted with Federal “civil rights” crimes.

Blacks commit murder at 9 times the white rate. Black on white murder is common, while white on black murder is an extreme rarity. We documented 400 black on white murders from 2014, but we could only find 4 cases of white on black murder. We even asked the SPLC and black power activists for help finding actual cases of a white person killing a black victim, in which the victim was not committing a felony at the time.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a personal email account to exclusively conduct official business during her time at the State Department, a move that raises questions about access to the full archive of her correspondence, as well as the possibility that she violated federal law requiring official messages to be retained for the record.

The existence of the account was discovered by the House select committee investigating the deadly 2012 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and was first reported by The New York Times.

Clinton did not even have a government email address during her tenure as America's top diplomat, which lasted from 2009 to 2013, and The Times reports that her aides took no action to preserve her emails on department servers, as required by the Federal Records Act.

Instead, the paper reports, Clinton's advisers selected which of her emails to turn over to the State Department for archival purposes after going through tens of thousands of pages of correspondence. The department said late Monday that it had received 55,000 pages of Clinton's emails as part of a request made to previous secretaries of state to turn over any official documents they may have had in their possession.

Drew Peterson will be back in a downstate courtroom Tuesday morning, as prosecutors lay out their case against him in an alleged murder-for-hire plot targeting Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow.

Peterson, 61, was accused last month of soliciting a hit man to kill Glasgow, who prosecuted him for the murder of Peterson's third wife, Kathleen Savio. The retired police sergeant was charged in Randolph County, which is home to the maximum-security Menard Correctional Center, where he has been incarcerated since February 2013.

A Georgia student believes his passion for politics and his criticism of President Obama has gotten him kicked off Facebook. And he's only 12 years old.CJ Pearson first began making a name for himself last week, by posting a video on YouTube, that supported former New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani's comments regarding Obama's on ISIS.

"I don't care about being politically correct at this point," Pearson said in the video. "President Obama, you don't love America."The video, which has nearly 1.5 million hits, made Pearson a hero to some."People are ready to hear a new voice," Pearson told FOX 5 Monday. "They're ready a fresh voice that represents our generation."But not everyone wants to hear it. Just days after posting his video on Facebook, he realized he could no longer log on to his account. From his home in Augusta, he described his frustration."The first amendment is very clear. We have a right to express our opinions regardless of who might disagree. And to silence that voice is a violation of that amendment."CLICK FOR MORE

Monday, March 2, 2015

For buyers and sellers on Craigslist, there's a new place to make the handoff: the police station.

Illinois police departments from Naperville to Peoria are offering their lobbies as "safe havens" for completing online transactions, joining a national trend.

Naperville police Cmdr. Ken Parcel said Monday that the department plans to announce that the lobby of its station can be used by buyers and sellers who connect through Craigslist and other online markets.

Those hankering for a Beverly favorite won’t have to wait much longer.

The Original Rainbow Cone, 9233 S. Western Ave., re-opens Saturday, March 7 at noon for its summer season. The first 50 customers through the line Saturday will receive a T-shirt.

“If you can’t wait until March 7, we’ll officially be open March 6 at noon,” staff wrote on the ice cream shop’s Facebook page.

Original Rainbow Cone was founded in 1926 by Joseph and Katherine Sapp. It was purchased in the ‘80s by their granddaughter Lynn, who has expanded Rainbow’s business to participating in summer events like the Taste of Chicago, Lollapalooza and local neighborhood festivals.

The Justice Department will soon release a report condemning the Ferguson, Mo., police department for actions that helped to foster bitterness within the city’s black community ahead of last year’s high-profile shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a police officer, according to The New York Times.

The report will point a finger at police for targeting black residents during traffic stops and using those fines to make up a significant portion of the budget, the newspaper reported. The Times reports that the Justice Department could release those findings this week. If the department doesn’t make clear strides to change its policies, it could face a federal civil rights lawsuit.

Racial tension in Ferguson came to a head last summer after then-officer Darren Wilson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in an altercation. A grand jury declined to charge Wilson, finding his use of force was justified. But many civil rights activists and others in the black community believe Wilson overreacted and that Brown didn’t pose a true threat to him.

A west suburban man is facing domestic battery charges after he punched his pregnant girlfriend in the face while she was holding a child Saturday afternoon at Brookfield Zoo, according to police.

Patrick O’Meara, 28, of Oak Park is charged with two counts of domestic battery and one count of endangering the life of a child, according to a statement from Riverside police.

O’Meara started arguing with his girlfriend inside the zoo’s lion house about a missing hat for her 11-month-old child about 3:45 p.m., police said. The argument escalated into a physical fight, and O’Meara punched his girlfriend in the face while she was holding the child.

She tried to run away, and he grabbed a stroller and pushed it into her, causing her to fall while she held the baby, police said. He then ran after her, wrapped his hand in a baby blanket and punched her several times, police said. Zoo police called 911 and officers arrested O’Meara.

On the way to the police station, O’Meara became violent, and struck his head and face against the squad car windows and divider, police said.

Paramedics were called to the station to treat the girlfriend and her child, but she declined to be transported to a hospital and refused to cooperate with investigators, police said. She is five-months pregnant.

O’Meara gave both a verbal and written statement admitting he attacked his girlfriend, police said.

“In Mr. O’Meara’s statement he told responding officers that he put the baby blanket around his fist in order to lessen the blows to his girlfriend so she would not be severely injured. This statement in itself is completely irrational,” Riverside Police Chief Tom Weitzel said in the statement.

Court information for O’Meara, of the 700 block of Wenonah in Oak Park, was not immediately available.

Specifically, Congress’ inability to pass clean bills that are free of restrictions. That hasn’t happened when it comes to a yearlong funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security.

“Hopefully we’re gonna end the attaching of bullshit to essential items of the government,” Kirk said late last week, according to Talking Points Memo.

Kirks comments came before Congress cleared a one-week extension for the department after 52 House conservatives defied their leadership and helped scuttle legislation that would have given the agency a three-week reprieve.

The Senate had previously passed a clean bill, but House Republicans attached a variety of immigration policy restrictions to their funding bill.

PHOTO: After 67 years of nightmares and bouts of anxiety and depression, World War II veteran Stanley Friedman, with the help of dogged pro bono lawyers, began receiving benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder in 2012 at age 92. | Sun-Times library

It took 11 times the length of World War II for Army veteran Stanley Friedman to win his battle with the V.A.

After 67 years of nightmares and bouts of anxiety and depression, Mr. Friedman, with the help of dogged lawyers working pro bono, began receiving benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder in 2012 at age 92.

An Illegal Beaner gave birth to a baby girl anchor baby in a car just off the Eisenhower Expressway early Monday morning.

Javier Sanchez was rushing his wife to the hospital after she started having contractions. But he had to get off the highway around 3:40 a.m. in the 900 block of South Austin Boulevard because her contractions intensified, according to fire officials and Sanchez.

Sanchez helped deliver his baby while also calling 911, he told WGN-TV.

“She just came out fast,” Sanchez said in a video. “I tried to make it to the hospital, but I (couldn’t).”

Sanchez’s wife and their newborn, Camila Ruiz Estrada Sanchez, were taken to West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park where they were both listed in good condition, according to Chicago Fire Department spokesman Juan Hernandez and WGN-TV.

Hernandez said that giving birth in a car on the side of a highway is not an uncommon scenario for fire department personnel.

MADISON, WI - A fight inside a crowded Wisconsin shopping mall led to gunfire in the parking lot.

Police say at least two people were involved in the incident, which started in the food court of Madison's West Town Mall. Witnesses say shoppers and mall workers scrambled for cover or ran out of the mall.

The people involved in the fight chased each other outside, where the shots were fired.

Police say no one was hurt. The people involved are still on the loose.

Students at a Catholic school in New Jersey have not been punished for dressing up as a monkey and a banana to taunt black basketball players at a high school game.
The two Holy Spirit High School seniors screamed from the sidelines as their classmates played Atlantic City, whose team is mostly black.
Despite numerous complaints, both were simply issued with warnings.

A woman has defended her decision to sent $1.4 million to her online lover in Africa - who she has never met.

Twice-divorced Sarah met Chris Olsen online 18 months ago.

Though the mysterious man's accent has changed over time, and he keeps asking for money to be wired to various different countries, Sarah insists she is '95 per cent certain' that he is telling her the truth.

Despite his numerous attempts to come home so they can be together, she says, he keeps getting arrested on false charges.

Minnie Minoso, Chicago’s first black major league baseball player who became one of the White Sox’s greatest stars, died Sunday morning.

Minoso was found unresponsive in the driver's seat of a car near a gas station in the 2800 block of North Ashland Avenue around 1 a.m., according to police. There were no signs of trauma and Minoso was pronounced dead at the scene at 1:09 a.m., police said.

Chicago police said they were conducting a death investigation, as is routine. An autopsy will be performed.

His son said the family believes Minoso died from a heart condition he had suffered, but were awaiting autopsy results. He had a pacemaker.

An illegal beaner was ordered held without bail Saturday on charges of repeatedly molesting four young members of his extended family over a five-year period, prosecutors said.

Jesus J. Maldonado, 53, is charged with predatory criminal sexual assault of two girls and aggravated criminal sexual abuse of two others. The girls were between 6 and 9 years old when Maldonado began molesting them, prosecutors said.

Maldonado fled to Mexico this month after the relatives confided in each other about the attacks and told another family member, according to Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Elizabeth Novy.

The University of Chicago Crime Lab has teamed up with the MacArthur Foundation and Get In Chicago to offer up to $1 million each for the best ideas to curtail youth violence.

The Chicago Tribune reports that organizers behind the competition want inventive solutions that improve the lives of Chicago's urban youth.

Organizers say they hope the information collected will help them find common elements of effective programs to aid youths ages 13 to 18. Chicago exceeds the national average for young homicide victims.

President Barack Obama's My Brother's Keeper initiative was modeled on a program that came from a 2009 competition launched by the crime lab.

The deadline for an initial plan is Monday. The best will be chosen to submit full proposals. Awards will be announced in May.

But just like Trayvon Martin, they like to show a picture of him years ago when he "looked" like a sweet innocent colored boy....

Incredibly, the City of Cleveland responded on Friday to a lawsuit filed by the family of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by saying he was responsible for his own demise. The boy was shot dead by cops while he held a pellet gun.

The city, in its response, wrote that Tamir’s death on Nov. 22 and all of the injuries his family claims in the suit “were directly and proximately caused by their own acts, not this Defendant.” It also says that the 12-year-old’s shooting death was caused “by the failure … to exercise due care to avoid injury.”

The response does not explain these defenses in more detail, though 20 defenses are listed in all, including another one that says Tamir died because of “the conduct of individuals or entities other than Defendant.”

The Rice family’s lawyers had filed their case initially in federal court last December, a brief eight-page document. On Friday, with a new legal team including Benjamin Crump, the lawyer who has represented the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, the Rice family filed a 65-page document charging at least 27 different allegations.

Their claims ranging from excessive force by the two officers who encountered Rice, Frank Garmback and Timothy Loehmann, to negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, and deliberate indifference to a serious medical need.

Some of the charges stem from the way family members were treated by police as the boy lay dying. As described in a NewsOne interview with Tamir’s mother Samaria Rice:

When Rice arrived on the scene of the fatal shooting, she saw her 16-year-old son being held up against a police car surrounded by Cleveland police officers. Meanwhile, her 14-year-old daughter was being detained handcuffs in the back of the police car that Officer Loehmann had gotten out of prior to the shooting.

Rice said as she tried to get to her son, the Cleveland police officers on the scene told her to calm down or they would put her in the police car, as well. “Police gave me an ultimatum” to either stay with her daughter or ride to the hospital with her son Tamir, she explained. “So of course I went with the 12-year-old.” Instead of riding next to her dying son, “They made me sit in front of the ambulance like I was a passenger,” she said.

Tamir died of his wounds the next day and the coroner has since ruled the death a homicide.

Many Chicago area residents will get some much-needed financial help for their big winter utility bills after attending a Utility Assistance Fair Saturday on the city's South Side.

Officials with ComEd, CEDA, Nicor and Peoples Gas helped residents with funding and customer programs at Kennedy-King College on West 63rd.

"There's two different types of grants you can apply for the help with your heating bill," said Jennifer Block, Director Media Relations, Peoples Gas. "One is LIHEAP, which is a federal and state funded program, and then there's also the Peoples Gas Share the Warmth Fund, and there's over $1 million in that fund."

Another fair is scheduled for Saturday, March 7 at Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences on West 111th from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.